Mobile station (MS) or mobile phone users increasingly rely on their mobile phones for their communication and organizational needs. Many of today's mobile phones are equipped to allow access to a wide variety of data services including e-mail and the Internet. The most prevalent cellular telephony standard is the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). Within the GSM standard, there are provisions for a variety of evolving data standards. One of the more popular data standards is the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and the Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) standard. GPRS and EDGE are popular because of their relatively high bandwidth characteristics that allow mobile phone users to send and receive data at or near broadband data rates between their mobile phones and a service provider's cellular network.
The GSM specification includes the GPRS/EDGE sub-specification that governs the procedures for attaching and detaching a mobile station (MS) with a cellular network. Within the GSM/GPRS/EDGE specification, however, there are scant provisions for automatic GPRS/EDGE reattachment of a mobile station to the network following a network detach request.
What is needed is a procedure that automatically allows the mobile phone to attempt to re-attach to GPRS/EDGE service after executing a network detach request.